NHL 11 Demo Available Now, Post Your Impressions Here (360, PS3)

[StormJH1]

Re: NHL 11 Demo Available Now, Post Your Impressions Here (360)

Anyone notice that the protect puck button(A) has been given some treatment? There is actual skating with this feature and not just the curl and hold arm out from previous years.

No, I hadn't even tried that! In fact, I never used that stupid button because there was never a time I wanted to shield the puck if it meant I had to STOP SKATING! I will have to check that out.

[crobert0247]

Re: NHL 11 Demo Available Now, Post Your Impressions Here (360)

Hahahahahaha! They included a beaver tail animation when player lock is enabled(at least). I was breaking up center with Hall and pressed the call for pass trigger and just before Doughty sent the outlet, Hall beaver tailed his stick on the ice! LOL! I have never seen this much little detail in a game before. Crazy!

[ch46647]

Re: NHL 11 Demo Available Now, Post Your Impressions Here (360)

LOVE IT! I do hope they give the game a slight speed bump for on-line play though. The game is running a tad to slow for me at the moment...

[m-dogg]

Re: NHL 11 Demo Available Now, Post Your Impressions Here (360)

3 questions that will help EASHL cheese:

can someone play as the smallest skater on the ice and run around trying to hit everything that moves? do you succeed? and you manhandled? I'd love to hear midgets are finally victims to the laws of actual physics this year, might make more people be normal size...naaaahh...

can someone just try and cross crease over and over, passing right through AI defense men? EA said they improved the AI D to intercept or deflect these passes this year, but we heard that last year as well - and I have watched the puck go right through my player, other human players, and tons of AI players for another cross crease goal over and over online. sometimes it will even make my player reach for the puck, but not even deflect it. you watch real hockey and that pass is always taken away if the defenseman is in position, it certainly gets deflected most of the time if attempted. I think they look at the passing rating too much and it over powers common logic with players sitting in the passing lane waiting for the puck. reward smart players please.

and is the hustle button too effective? I can see this leading to a lot of 2 on 1's, with one midget up ahead with the puck, the D chasing him, and another midget beating everyone else down ice because the hustle button combined with his size makes him the fastest player on the ice since he does not have the puck.

thanks for whoever might test these.

also is the fake shot still on the right stick (click in)? i hate that, hope its removed hehe.

[18 eighty 5]

Re: NHL 11 Demo Available Now, Post Your Impressions Here (360)

uh-oh, no penalty for breaking his stick? I am really worried about all those midgets constantly trying to stick lift me in EASHL and breaking my stick while they magicly get the puck...bad enough you are frozen in that animation after you get stick lifted, now they can break your stick too and not get penalized?

I suppose another cool thing about this is that the players got a bit tangled and the puck slid away from the two of them and the defender did keep his body between me and the puck but after the puck slid far enough away he took off and left me alone.

I hear your concern because if the puck slides in a favourable position for your opponent you could be in trouble. Still, it was great to see the puck as a 'live' element.

One more thing on the hitting. I had the puck behind the oppositions net, a defender came out and tried to hit me, he dislodged the puck from my stick and he spun around because fo the impact and then the two of us fought after the puck behind the net. But there was nothing unnatural about the whole thing. The defender did not warp back onto the puck or magically get into an advantageous position. It all looked legit. Really good stuff, way more like the real thing.

[TDKing]

Re: NHL 11 Demo Available Now, Post Your Impressions Here (360)

Haven't had a chance to try the demo yet but was wondering how you guys like the new passing system ? If Online GM is in this game and they did it right, I will buy 2 copies of this game.

[RealmK]

Re: NHL 11 Demo Available Now, Post Your Impressions Here (360)

i really like how the game speed was slowed down a bit.

the strategy you set at the edit line screen finally work again. no need to change them in game anymore.

nice to see the cpu players actually make moves and dekes to get passed ya.

also cool to see them dump the puck in and go get it, as well as dumping to get a line change.

slash button is gone, thank god!!

post whistle is solid now, no mortal kombat fights going on..

sigh, top of circle wrist shots go in at the same rate as in nhl 10.. top shelf, boom, back of the net.. so easy. i wish they would fix this.

they took out the attribute slider. the one that makes skilled players stand out more.

same stupid fake slap shot backhand or forehand is still money on a breakaway. as is the deke to backhand and then release deke to forehand wrist shot..

sigh.

the Ultimate Team will get some playing time from me, just bc its something different.

The attribute slider is still there Fids, look again.

[bdseed316]

Re: NHL 11 Demo Available Now, Post Your Impressions Here (360)

I really wish they would've given us 3 5 minute periods to play. The Madden demo got 20 minutes of playing time.

[pandacore]

Re: NHL 11 Demo Available Now, Post Your Impressions Here (360)

really loving the EAUHL (or whatever it's called.) Line chemistry is an added bonus, and really makes you think about tweaking each line. One thing I haven't noticed so far is contract cards, when players contracts' expire, will there be a way to extend their playing time? So far I've only found training cards.

Also, found that there's manual hip checks this year. Push in right analog and skate towards a player.

Lastly, new 1 on 1 deke moves:
LB + up: puck handler hops over diving players.
LB + down: puck handler brings puck towards feet and kicks it back to the stick

[MiNiDiTkA]

Re: NHL 11 Demo Available Now, Post Your Impressions Here (360)

Wasn't sure if I should make a separate thread so I'll just my vids here.

Hawks vs Flyers - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OnRN9_3rE4w

[18 eighty 5]

Re: NHL 11 Demo Available Now, Post Your Impressions Here (360)

[quote=m-dogg;2041482133]3 questions that will help EASHL cheese:

can someone play as the smallest skater on the ice and run around trying to hit everything that moves? do you succeed? and you manhandled? I'd love to hear midgets are finally victims to the laws of actual physics this year, might make more people be normal size...naaaahh...


From what I have seen I think this should be more realistic. I tried for just a bit to do what you are asking but it is surprising how hard it is to nail another player when thats all you are trying to do lol.

I did notice that rather than full on takedowns there was more glancing which semed to result in a shift in momentum to both players.

Even tried to smash a lone skater after the whistle but the two just kind of collided and bounced mildly off eachother. However, I could feel the dull thud of the impact. I have only done it once in this demo during a stoppage where I have pasted a guys a$$ on the ice when he wasn't expecting it. It was brutal full frontal hit, had me chuckling.

You should be aware that hip checks and so forth can be very effective but nothing seems over the top. This demo is certainly not a hit fest.

OK, quickly I will give it another shot then I am off to bed.

Righto, I just used Madden to deliberately stalk down the cpu but all he did was shove them and kind of push them off their line but he did not send them into the next life like perhaps last years game would have. I am just suspecting that fatigue may also be an issue, the longer he was out there the more sluggish he seemed. NOt really enough oompf to really do too much damage the longer the shift went on. Eventually he was just glancing off the cpu.

[crobert0247]

Re: NHL 11 Demo Available Now, Post Your Impressions Here (360)

Anyone notice how much faster the ref skates in to whistle you for a penalty? He warp skates in and makes the call now. No more lollydagging in. Also, I'm really liking the passing system. Stretch passes can now be done a lot easier IMO. Like real hockey, you can put some torque on your passes. Awesome!

[Lordofthething]

Re: NHL 11 Demo Available Now, Post Your Impressions Here (360)

The attribute slider is still there Fids, look again.

RealmK, I thought you were waiting for the PSN? Was the temptation to great and you get a Gold membership for a month? I was thinking of doing that...it's only like $9...and I might leave work at lunch anywho...

[akula]

Goalie Bug ?

anyone noticing goalies letting pucks sit right in front of them without knocking it away or covering up? it's happening to me sometimes multiple times a game!! hope they fix this for retail

[adayinthelife]

Re: NHL 11 Demo Available Now, Post Your Impressions Here (360)

I've played 3 periods so far and these are my first thoughts:

Authentic puck size and puck shadow = FINALLY. I have no idea why this took so long to implement on consoles (it used to be in the old pc versions) but I'm so glad it's finally here. It sounds minor, but it's just so to play with a puck that isn't the size of your players face.

Sticks - I have only seen 1 broken stick thus far which is good (it was on a hit) and I've been seeing a decent amount of players just straight up losing their sticks, which is awesome. The amount of times you see a stick break on a big hit vs a player just losing his stick is pretty slim and I was worried this wouldn't translate well, but it has.

AI - Now, I haven't played NHL 10 in a few months, but the AI does seem to be quite improved especially on the offensive side. I've been deked on rushes!

Goals - I've seen 4 goals, all of which were different. I've scored on a straight wrister and a tip in, while the AI has scored on a rebound and a nice deke(!) by Kane.

Hitting - I'm not as pumped about this as a lot of you guys seem to be unfortunately. While it is light years ahead of the animation based checking from previous years, it still feels pretty clunky and there are quite a few questionable hits. The good news is that no, not nearly every hit is a big hit (even at these default slider settings), but I really don't know how the physics are working on some, I'm just finding players don't react to hits from certain angles as you would expect them to. Also as far as the "every hit is different" idea that we've been hearing about, that's just simply not true. In my limited experience thus far I've seen several hits that if not identical, were very similar. Most of this seems to lie in the player who got hit and their reaction once they hit the ice - perhaps this is where the "real time physics" cut out?

Puck physics - Much like the hitting the puck physics are improved, but really not that different than 10. Maybe I need to spend more time with it to see or maybe we'll just have to wait for retail to dick around with some sliders.

Overall I'm quite pleased and SUPER eager to learn more about Be a GM. On the surface this is still the same game which will probably let down a few people and is also probably one reason for the lack of gameplay vids thus far. You really do need to play it to see the difference - it really does feel like a new game when you have the controller in your hand.